(Part 2) Top products from r/Lightroom

Forgive me but I’m going to assume you’re aiming for true to life color accuracy over stylistic or creative intent or “looks” (moody, grunge, surreal, dreamy, vintage). If so, getting your WB and exposure correct is the bulk of the work. What follows is to get you the rest of the way there.

Photoshop or Affinity Photo provide more flexibility to do these types of corrections, and with Lightroom it becomes a matter of deciding what you’re willing to trade for correct skin tones: money, time, or creative intent.

If You Have Money

purchase the x-rite color checker passport. Once you get going with this, you’ll get color accurate photos with little effort on your part.

If you’re anal about color accuracy you’ll need to make sure you have a sample photo of the passport using the same lens, and in the same lighting condition, as the photos you want to correct. It has the benefit of also nailing your WB for you.

Going this route, you’ll miss out on learning how to correct colour yourself. It’s all done for you though so you save time. A lot of time.

If You Have Time

There are recommended ratios of R:G:B values for different skin tones depending on race. The singular best source I’ve found on this is Dan Margulis’ book: Professional Photoshop Chapter 3: Color by The Numbers. Get the physical copy if you’re serious about it. The kindle version doesn’t include the disc and the images are heavily compressed, you don’t get to really witness the techniques he’s applying.

Once you know the color theory you’ll know when to use which panel in Lightroom for your correction.

There’s also a YouTube video by PixImperfect that touches on these skin ratios. The host provides a swatch image with the most common ratios that you can reference.

Creative Intent

The most recommended tool is the Tone Curve, but in LR, it acts on the entire image globally. The curve will adjust the luminance value of each channel but in doing so will affect your hue and saturation. You’ll want to be very precise and adjust the curves with intent. Use this if you need subtle corrections. Photoshop has the added advantage of masking and using blend modes with your curves.

Next is the Camera Calibration panel, this is also global, and will adjust your hue or saturation but preserves your luminance values. This is amazing for creative edits.

By far the most forgiving is the HSL panel. It’s what I use only after I’ve settled on a white balance. This is the one tool I wish was available in photoshop and affinity photo.

A more advanced option would be to use an adjustment brush painted over the skin. The adjustment would use the WB slider and the Tint slider. It may seem like less control but if you know your color theory it gets the job done. Do this if you don’t want to affect the color on other parts of the photo. I use this for portraits of people taken over grass. The skin under the chin, nose and cheeks take on a green tint. I only want to target those areas not the rest of the skin which is usually fine.

Measuring The Values

In the Tone Curves panel you can use the selector/sampler (not sure what’s the official name) to hover over somewhere in the images and see the RGB value as well as where it falls on the curve in terms of luminance. I believe the RGB value under the mouse pointer will also appear below the histogram I just can’t remember how to activate it.

I would sample the skin somewhere between the midpoint and 3/4 up the curve. Anything past 3/4 is the highlight region and every hue starts to converge towards white, skewing your reading of what the actual skin hue is.

I hope this helps.

Buy a color calibrator, or do it very crudely (if you are selling prints I would not do this) and hold your phone next to your MacBook and use the basic software adjustments like contrast, gamma, and rgb settings to match it. A proper color calibrator will ensure your photos are accurate and as even as they can be across all screens. Some of the higher end ones even allow camera and printer calibration. Once again, unless you are just shooting for fun, id STRONGLY recommend actually buying a proper calibrator like these:
Datacolor spyder5PRO or the spyder5elite

x-rite colormunki display or the x-rite idisplay PRO

Thanks for the info! I just wanted to clarify and make sure I’m understanding you.

So I have a MacBook Pro 2016 so it should have the NVME SSD right ?

You said in order to take advantage of thunderbolt you need a drive faster than usb 3. Are you talking about the drive in the computer or the external harddrive ?

lacie 2 TB

So I was looking at this 2 TB harddrive with thunderbolt. It’s 169

Versus the usb 3.0 2 TBs that are like 60 bucks from WD or Seagate.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FRHTTIU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-f6aBbHKYWEEV


I’m trying to figure out which I should buy .

I keep active projects on 2.5" laptop solid state drives I put in cheap SSD enclosures (like these ). I work off these and keep them around as 'warm' storage.

For cold storage I have large (4TB) spinning hard drive externals, which works but isn't so safe. I should really move to some Raid system.

In general this works for me and is pretty cost conscious :)

I did a little research into it a while back but then stopped when I began traveling. The tricky part is that new controllers can be pricey, and used controllers on Craigslist all tend to be slider. BUT, I did find a few decent candidates.

8 dials for $85

16 dials for $220 (admittedly they do look super pretty)

And I have no idea where I'd map them all (or even how many of them could be mapped), but 32 dials for $150.

On the software side, there should be some free control-mapping apps out there, but I don't have any links off hand.

I don't know about the mini, but I use this : https://www.amazon.com/Behringer-BCF2000-BEHRINGER-B-CONTROL-FADER/dp/B000CZ0RJ2

And life is good. :)

I learned lightroom from these two books:

http://www.amazon.com/Lightroom-Streamlining-Digital-Photography-Process/dp/047060705X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Voice-Refining-Photoshop-Lightroom/dp/0321670094/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310770515&sr=1-9


The first one give you all the nuts and bolts. It's so important to figure out how you want

• Set up catalogs
  
  
• Name your files
  
  
• Convert to DNG or not
  
  
  
• Other neat stuff
  
  
  The second book is more about the artistic side. (the author also has a great blog)
  
  
  Good luck!
  
  
  

Check out YouTube tutorials for sure, that's where I learned the most. Also Tony Northrup's book is probably the best print resource.

Adobe Lightroom Classic CC Video Book https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997950528/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_gt8XBbGB1F66F

Yup I've got 16gig ddr3 1333mhz ram. and a 256 kingston SSD. not too sure of the quality of either as I didn't source the parts, but I did some trials yesterday and it shredded everything I could throw at it in Lightroom. 100 5dmkiii raw files took about 5 min. to render 1:1 previews. Ground through the pictures in the library/develop module was snappy. Edits in develop module were snappier than I am accustomed to as well even on a 4k screen. (https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-U28E590D-28-Inch-LED-Lit-Monitor/dp/B00YD3DBOC) (granted the performance might be due to a clean reboot.) HDR merge didn't seem any faster than before.

https://www.amazon.com/Redragon-CENTROPHORUS-2000-Gaming-Buttons-Weight/dp/B00HTK1NCS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480089044&sr=8-1&keywords=red+dragon+mouse

I just use the cheap thing.
It's ugly as hell, but it is comfortable and the being able to adjust the sensitivity on the fly is nice.

The Scott Kelby book is good.

Welcome!

Weddings are a lot of work and stress, its an all day event filled with every event from action to low light to still life to portraits and group photos. It's a lot of work.

Before I say anything this book is going to blow your mind: http://www.amazon.com/Photography-Questions-Answers-Voices-Matter/dp/0321929500

Buy that and read that front to back.

Now to answer your question, it depends on my client for what I offer them. I am an artist at heart and I believe offering my clients an album is a better way to have their lovely day remembered. The clients will see their proofs online on my site and pick the ones for the album which I design and they get those picked images for web and facebook and everything. If they want more images they can get both the album and the usb/download of images (# of images depends on hours shot so like 6 hours = 200 images because of how I shoot, and my acceptance rate is low and I can't say 100 images per hour cuz I may only get 1 during that hour). If they don't want the album they can get the set amount of images for swapping it out. Or they can get both at a discounted rate. Whew.

I print through millers lab now for all my prints and kiss.us for my albums. I've been shooting weddings since 2009 and have done a lot of traveling and shot over 50 weddings or so. not a lot if you ask me but I'm working on that too ;)

To figure out your price (something I struggled with when I started) was very hard. Do I charge based on experience or creativity or my customer service? It's all of those to be honest but one thing is you have to have a basis of knowledge to go off of. how much is it for you to run your business? upkeep and taxes and gear and cleaning and editing and ect ect. you have to know this stuff to have a good place of where to start. You also have to do market research (what I mean by this is to look around your area at what others at your level are charging). you're beginning, it's okay to make mistakes. As much as I hate making mistakes it's better that I made that mistake and I learned 80 things from it than to not make it and continue doing something wrong.

Make sense?

It looks like it's "exFAT" file system, showing as "USB Drive" in properties and connected via a USB 3.0 cable.

This is the drive I'm using right now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KYK1IES/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The drive is nearly empty (I just wiped everything so I can use it as a lightroom drive) so I'm not too worried if I need to re-format or anything, if thats what it takes?

I buy 2TB regular internal PC harddrives for about $70 when they're on sale. I have a Blackx Thermolake dock that lets me access the drives. I drop the drives into that dock once every week and copy all the photos onto the drives. Then one drive goes into my firebox, one goes into a book shelf on the other side of the house and (once a month) I bring one drive to my parents house so that if my house burns down, I still have copies.

Dock is here: http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-5-0Gbps-Docking-Station-ST0019U/dp/B003ZUXXVU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1464374853&sr=8-3&keywords=blackx+docking+station

Command to copy photos to the drive looks like:
xcopy D:\Photos\ E:\Photos\ /s/d/c/y

E: is the 2TB drive. /s does all subdirectories. /d Only moves new files

I'm using a Touro Mobile Pro (Hitachi) -> Amazon

• USB 3.0
  
• 7200 U/min.
  
• 1 TB

I've been looking at getting this thing, the reviews suggest it would work with Premiere and stuff, so it might also work with Lightroom.

http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Technology-NA16029-Multimedia-Controller/dp/B003VWU2WA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450299886&sr=8-1&keywords=griffin+media+controller

But, it might not really be what you're looking for.